If it wasn't for all the profanity, I'd swear you were a bot. You've posted this "sync from the XML" comment no less than 5 times in the past month.

More on point.. I get the feeling you're neither a software engineer nor an attorney.

I mean, "mucking around with serial numbers"...seriously? The DMCA explains clearly what is and is not legal, and inventing a number that happens to coincide with an Apple serial number is certainly not.

And Palm can free themselves from tortious issues simply by ensuring a "cleanroom" reverse-engineer.

Perhaps. But those of us with *FOUR* braincells, and a little experience actually writing software, can knock holes in your argument pretty easily.

The most obvious being, what if I chose to manually manage the music on my device? iTunes has no issue with this, but Palm would have to write their own GUI that would read the iTunes XML and then allow drag-n-drop sync.

Second, as a user, the last thing I need is another iTunes. I like the software. I know the software. It does its job well. If I want to buy a Pre, I as a consumer would just much rather use what I'm currently using.

Third, there are about a trillion edge cases with your suggestion. Like, multiple XML files. How will I know which XML file the user is using? I could have one in my All Users and one in my personal profile. iTunes has a simple option under the File menu to load a library. What would Palm do if they went gui-less and implemented your suggestion.

Finally, Palm isn't complaning that Apple updated their app. They just updated the Pre to match it. Why on Earth does it bother you so much? Apple are treating the iPod is hardly more than a hardware dongle for iTunes. Fine. But no reason to bunch-up your panties just because Palm circumvents their DRM. And don't kid yourself, that's exactly what a dongle is. DRM.

You just have to wear it proud. That's the problem with AIDS, too many people walking around ashamed of the lesions on their face. I walk around with lesions and I make it look good. More girls talk to me *because* of it.

Google's natural language query features are so spotty that you can't ask a question and expect an answer with any reliability. For example, similar to your example, "How tall is Barack Obama" answers me correctly. "How old is Barack Obama" does not.

And the hover states for search results are impressive. It doesn't just pull the first X bytes, it parses the entire page and returns a synopsis as best it can. These features were from Powerset and they've done a good job with them here. Similarly, the hovers on image search.

I don't know if Bing will gain any traction or not. But at the very least it's the 2nd best search engine available and it's been live for about 12 hours now...

I'd wager that in nearly every case where a user installs the java VM themselves, it's because they tried to install/run an app that required it and were told that they needed the Runtime, with a link to download or include as part of the current install process.

And I'd wager that in nearly all of those instances, the user has at best a cursory idea of what the Java VM is.

The fact is.. all this is doing is adding 50 bytes to your 500 byte UserAgent string, and supporting ClickOnce which is a distribution method identical to that used by Java and very similar to what's now used in Adobe Air.

Murdoch is nothing like this guy. Murdoch got "high up" in News Corp by BUILDING the company himself. He embraced changing technology. He is STILL embracing changing technology. And the story you linked is nothing like that this guy is advocating.

Murdoch is saying, "Newspapers produce a large amount of new content each day. People value investigative journalism. Investigative journalism requires great investment. The old way we funded that investment is being rejected by the marketplace. We want to provide the same Investigative Journalism we have come to rely on, but we need to fund it differently. So we are going to charge you for the premium content we supply. We have to."

The Sony exec is saying "Waaah. Waaah. Waaah."

I dont much like Murdoch or his politics. But there's nothing wrong with what he's saying. People have long paid for newspapers, newspapers provide a real service and they are a NEED, not a want like music and movies from Sony, and they're going to move to a "freemium" or paid subscription model online.

There has been so much high-profile news about Newspapers going under lately that he probably thought he could capitalize on the emotional sentiment that most people have about it.

There's no doubt that the rise of the net has hurt the newspaper business as it's existed in the past. It's 3 major revenue streams (Advertising, Classifieds and Subscriptions, in that order) have all been eroded to various degrees.

And it's really a terrible situation because they did what they were supposed to do: They have diversified their revenue. It just so happens that the internet is such a sea change in content distribution that it invalidated all 3 major revenue streams in one felt swoop.

The BS from this Sony guy, though, is that he compares it to how the internet has hurt Sony's music biz. I "pirate" content with the best of them but I do agree that it's not cool to take from artists for free. Tho I don't mind so much because Artists have lost their way for so long and have gotten so abused by "The Biz" for so long that I'm not taking $15 out of the pocket of The Boss when I download his new CD, I take maybe $1. Or less.

No doubt it's Sony (et al)'s fault for failing to bend to the new realities of the market. But that's the cause-in-fact. The proximate cause of their troubles is people downloading unlicensed content.

That's far from the story of the Newspaper Business. They chose to give away their content (more or less) for free and try to monetize with online advertising. The proximate cause of their revenue drop is giving away their content. The cause-in-fact is a changing distribution system (the internet).

He's muddling the issue because any intellectually honest person knows he hasn't a leg to stand on. That he's whining because his money tree is dying a slow death.

The GOP has shrunk a great deal in the last 4 years. Moderates and Independents left the party. Millions of them.

The result is a GOP that is far more conservative than it was as recently as the 2004 election.

BushCo drove so many sane people out of the GOP that the only people left are of the dyed-in-the-wool variety.

Such a party is not going to nominate a moderate. Specter knew that. Everybody knew that.

The people of PA have re-elected Specter many times. By switching parties he's preventing a small group of very conservative voters from restricting the people of PA from electing somebody they've supported over and over in the past.

This would all be moot if PA, like most states, had open primaries where registered dems and indies could vote in the GOP primary if they chose to do so.